There seems to be a great divide amongst the general public about the relative safety of online shopping. There is one portion of the public that has become almost blaze about it, they trust the current system and simply couldn’t be bothered with the hype or perceived inconvenience of adding security. On the other side there is a large portion of the public who are so paranoid they refuse to make their first purchase over the internet. In its Fifth Annual UK Online Fraud Report CyberSource found that 41 per cent of people who do not currently shop online cite concerns about the security of online shopping as the reason.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about a bell curve of people with some on each extreme, but this debate seems to be greatly exaggerated at the two extremes with a disproportionate few at the (usually) reasonable middle portion. By middle portion I mean those that enjoy shopping online while taking precautions. I think the main reason most online shoppers implicitly trust the system, and, therefore, put themselves at risk, is because of a lack of education. Ironically it is also lack of education that keeps non-online shoppers from taking the plunge. So is education the answer to the continuing growth of the online channel? Well, not exactly.

While education will undoubtedly help the online channel grow, what is needed is proactive security. Like preventative medicine, proactive security will greatly lessen the constant one-upmanship that is going on with hackers and security professionals. By the time we find the ‘cure’ for one virus (or other security hazard), five more are discovered. With a little bit of prevention work many of these hazards will be avoided and then the security professionals will have more time to carry on making the net secure.

What I am calling for is a complete change in the way we think about online security, one that focuses on security prevention. It is the only way to gain the trust of non-online shoppers and, hopefully, close the great divide.

It is this way of thinking that NetSecure tries to create its products. SmartSwipe is a proactive security technology that secures the shopper’s home computer for online transactions.